WILD JOURNEYS: New RTE 1 Series starts Sunday 21st

22nd Mar 2010

Your feedback on Wild Journeys series to RTE is needed.

If you enjoyed yesterday's Wild Journey's programme, we'd invite you to email RTE at info@rte.ie or call them on 01-2083111 to inform them. As a public broadcaster they respond very favourably to such feedback from members of the public who pay their fees. The more feedback they receive, the more likely they are to continue to support home grown Natural History programming.

Thanks as always for your support, IWDG

The stories of Ireland's most remarkable wildlife travelers

3 x 1 Hour High Definition Wildlife Documentary Series for RTÉ One

Sunday March 21st 6.30pm

Sunday March 28th 6.30pm

Sunday April 4th 6.30pm

SYNOPSIS.

Tracing the footsteps of Ireland's migrating wildlife as they travel the earth in a never-ending battle for survival

This series features Ireland's most heroic wildlife travelers and the incredible journeys they carry out every single year. From the 20,000km flown annually by the Manx Shearwaters to the transatlantic voyages of our eels and salmon, Wild Journeys' follows these voyagers to the ends of the Earth, showing the extraordinary challenges they meet and the magnificent landscapes they visit en-route.

The series publicises the vital work of Irish scientists as they tag and track the animals across the globe and reveals the amazing network of wildlife that links all life across the continents; how global warming directly affects our Barnacle Geese as they struggle to cope with a rapidly changing Arctic and the extraordinary distances covered by our marine animals.

As these remarkable creatures prepare to travel from or to Ireland, Wild Journeys is there to show us their Irish lives and chart each step of their epic journey. Never again will viewers take for granted an exhausted salmon leaping at a weir or the ragged formations of Geese heading north into the Atlantic.

BACKGROUND.

For thousands of years, Irish people have watched as waves of animals arrive out of the blue with the onset of summer and later as winter draws in, disappearing with equal certainty. As recently as two hundred years ago, it was still a complete mystery as to where they went  theories abounded of some mystical hibernation limbo where the animals spent the long winter months.

But with modern scientific research, we now know the entire planet is criss-crossed by the journeys of countless animals as they search for food, warmth and shelter. Technological advances have advanced significantly and satellite trackers are now smaller and cheaper than ever before, allowing scientists to track a huge number of species from freshwater eels across the Atlantic, to following barnacle geese on their annual migration to the Arctic and back.

Filmed over two years this series engages some of Ireland's most passionate naturalists who have daily contact with our natural world, from wildlife rangers and researchers to farmers, fishermen and wildlife enthusiasts. With a dedicated wildlife production team and filmed in High Definition, Wild Journeys' hopes to delight, entertain and inform at every turn.

Prog One  Sunday March 21st  RTÉ One  6:30pm.

Kicking off the series will be the 40 tonne leviathans that show up on our Southern coast every winter  the Humpback whale. We will follow Pádraig Whooley of the Irish Whale & Dolphin group to the Cape Verde Islands in his attempt to discover where these giants breed and we will showcase our extremely rare footage of the acrobatic Wexford whale that hit the news in January this year. The show will visit the breeding grounds of the lesser known Manx Shearwaters who can clock up 20,000km each year on their journey to South America and we will tell the story of the beloved Irish Salmon as it journeys all the way from the Arctic to it's spawning grounds in the Connemara hills.

Prog Two  Sunday March 28th  RTÉ One  6:30pm.

From the windswept Inishkea Islands off Mayo to the isolated coast of East Greenland the Barnacle G

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